American women are the world's largest economy, yet
few businesses market effectively to them, says Chicago marketing
consultant Martha Barletta. In Marketing to Women (Dearborn), Barletta
details how women control 83 percent of all consumer purchases (as
well as many business budgets), including 94 percent of furniture
purchases and two-thirds of health-care spending.

Barletta also shows how businesses muff their marketing to this
audience by relying on tools developed for male shoppers. In one
example, Barletta recounts how a carmaker's ad plugged a
vehicle with: "Victorious. That's how you feel behind the
wheel." Her point is that while men tend to endorse ambition,
women see such statements as self-aggrandizing; they'd prefer
to be told how owning the car would help them feel connected to
friends and family.

Barletta also offers a step-by-step guide for creating and
executing a complete women-targeting marketing plan, starting with
ways to identify women buyers for your product and progressing
through strategizing, messages, marketing media and more. It's
a message marketers of either gender would do well to heed.

Gut Feelings

Decision-makers who think they rationally weigh
alternatives and select the best are kidding themselves, says
management consultant Gary Klein. In fact, he says, intuition is
the prime force behind 90 percent of decisions made at work and
play. Now, in Intuition at Work (Currency/Doubleday),
Klein aims to provide tools for building and using intuitive
ability. Klein doesn't always succeed; his discussion of how to
employ intuition and hard data concludes that metrics must be
formulated to fit our intuition, without telling us how to do that.
But he consistently raises questions that deserve answers.
Searching for solutions will very likely make most entrepreneurs
better decision-makers.

Mark Henricks writes on business and technology issues for
leading publications and is the author of Not Just a
Living.